In the previous installment, the PCs:
- Critiqued a constitution.
- Plotted civic improvements.
- Performed, and then fought, an environmental cleanup operation.
The PCs are:
Tom Shambledrake
Electric Wizard
and heir to the bankrupt Shambledrake estate. Inventor of the Lightning
Accumulator, the Lightning Inverter, and the Iron Spike.
Jonty Earl
Dandy. Assistant Professor at Loxdon College. Deeply enmeshed in stock-jobbery and financial chicanery.
Dr. Augustus Hartwell
Biomancer.
A foreign doctor and self-described "quack", currently employed at
Blumsworth Hospital. Ally of speaking rats, workers, and other vermin.
Lizzy Ramchander
Potion Wizard, former cook, former brewer, and current secretary to Doyle Wormsby. Can duplicate herself.
Doyle Wormsby
Civic Wizard, Private Investigator. Truth before politics, payment before a case.
 |
| Alejandro Burdisio |
The Amateur Aeronautics Society
George Miles had gifted two Miras to the Iron Spike Thaumaturgy Company to secure their support for his flying vehicle. One Mira was a new off-the-shelf model, but the second was George's personal vehicle, donated on short notice. Doyle checked the glovebox, reasoning that George Miles may have left secret documents inside. He stacked receipts, invoices, and discarded toffee wrappers in a pile for Jonty. At the very back of the compartment, Doyle discovered an old iconograph.
Judging by its faded texture and blurry edges, it was taken at least ten years ago. Its contents staggered Doyle. He dropped a lit cigarette onto the upholstery and stared. Eight wizards in a formal line stared back. They were:
1. George Miles. The "Mira", a shortened form of "Miles' Moving Miracle" or a "car" short for "careening wildly through the sky" promised to revolutionize transport in Endon. Perhaps Miles had another revolution in mind.
2. Uriah Shambledrake Senior. Tom's late uncle. Possibly involved in necromancy, possibly involved in The Project, possibly not dead at all. His corpse wasn't in the family mausoleum at Shambledrake Manor, his signet ring was missing, and he'd died under extremely mysterious circumstances.
3. & 4. Doyle didn't recognize the next two people, but from family resemblance, age, and dress, reasoned were Tom's late lamented parents Clarence and Dorothy Shambledrake. They'd died in two separate lightning-related hot air balloon accidents in Tom's early teens, allegedly, steering Tom towards a life of lightning wizardry as a form of revenge.
5. Professor Tallerand. Disgraced biomancer, confirmed necromancer and orphan-harvester, and one of the leaders of The Project. Probably involved in the revolution, or at least the Mechanics' Societies.
6. Edward Konivov. Time wizard. Workshop sealed in a stasis sphere. Left other stasis spheres with dates inside in the catacombs all over Endon. Definitely involved in The Project and the revolution, definitely knows about Uriah Shambledrake Junior. Madder than a crate of ferrets.
7. A well dressed young man Doyle did not recognize. He squinted at the face, trying to extract details from its blurry wry smile. Expensive clothes and a hint of hereditary authority suggested nobility.
8. The final figure was slightly shabbily dressed in the manner of wizards in the middle of hard work. Scuffed boots, a waterproof hat. Doyle recognized the compass and stone charms on the wizard's belt as the charms of a geomancer.
The background, as far as Doyle could tell, featured a hill and some sort of ruined stone building. "Countryside," he muttered. He didn't trust it. The country was full of hedges and sheep and people with novelty accents. No pavement, no dark alleys, and no informants.
"Tom," Doyle said, handing him the iconograph. "Explain."
Tom stared and spluttered. "I... I don't think I can! Those are my parents, there's Uncle Uriah... but they knew Tallerand and Konivov? And George Miles!?"
"So it would seem. The back of the photograph says this is the 'Amateur Aeronautics Society of Endon'."
"I vaguely remember my parents talking about that," Tom said morosely.
"Do you remember anything else? 'Hello son, just popping down to visit the Society of Evil Wizards, be back shortly.' That sort of thing?" Doyle said.
Tom searched his memory, revisiting his happy and unremarkable childhood, and the somber scenes of his parents' deaths, with growing concern. "I think there's something wrong with my brain," he said.
"You can't remember your childhood?" Doyle replied.
"No, I can, but it's all... strange."
"Strange how?" Doyle said, frustrated by Tom's lack of introspection.
Ton flailed wildly. "Strange as in strange!" he said. "I can't explain it!"
"Damn. Another dead end." Doyle lit his fourth pre-breakfast cigarette and concentrated on the iconograph. "I bet the illusionists can do something with this. If an icongraph is the image of reality fixed in time by magical means, they should be able to make it more... more big. Like using the hair of a suspect to scry for them."
"Do you think so?" Tom asked, wishing Haze Palewolf, his childhood friend, was still alive.
Doyle shrugged. "Probably. It's worth a try."
The Thaumograph Exploder
"It is possible," Professor Galbraith (Illusions and Figments) mumbled, examining the iconograph. "Experimental, of course. And slightly dangerous. Did anyone in this image die a violent and unnatural death? Apart from Professor Tallerand, I mean. Assassinated by some of his own students, I heard. Something about necromancy. Any others?"
Tom grimaced. "Ah. Well. At least three others. Fire, lightning, and lightning."
"Relatives?" the professor said blandly.
"All three."
"This may be an indelicate question, but did you... facilitate any of those deaths? I ask only to ensure your safety."
"Of course not!" Tom said.
"I had to ask. You see, some primitive foreigners, present company excepted," he said, looking at Dr. Hartwell, "believe that an iconograph captures the soul of its subject. This is nonsense of course."
"Of course," Tom said reflexively. "Ha ha."
"But it does capture an echo, the faintest possible echo, of the soul. It can hardly do otherwise. Thaumic field theory, you see. As light passes through the soul's resonant envelope, it... well, never mind."
"Yes, never mind."
"In case of violent death and, err, murder," Professor Galbraith said, "we sometimes find that the enhanced icongraphic view creates disturbing images for the viewer. Words like 'haunting' and 'nightmare' are loaded terms. If you experience a... visitation, try to remember that it is not your dead relatives speaking, but only their thaumic echo. Any exhortations towards revenge, complaints about your lifestyle, et cetera, can be safely ignored."
Doyle interrupted. "Alright professor, set up your highly dangerous experimental iconograph exploder. Tick tock, we're on the clock."
"Remember, whatever you see is almost certainty not physically present," the assistant said. "Keep your limbs inside the designated area. Try not to move quickly, unless there is an emergency, in which case move as quickly as possible towards the exit."
"How will we know if there's an emergency?" Dr. Hartwell asked.
"You'll know," the assistant said, closing the door.
"How does this thing work again?" Lizzy asked.
"Professor Galbraith said it passes eight colours of very strong light through the icongraph while it's in a high magic field, and then projects the resulting image at us. That's the glowing prism down there," Tom said, pointing at one wall.
"Why are the walls covered in lead foil?"
"Shielding," Tom said.
"Why did Professor Galbraith leave the building and walk briskly to the other side of campus?"
"He said he had an urgent appointment."
"And why is there a drain in the floor?"
The rest of the group looked at the floor for the first time, noticing the scorch marks, drain, and chalked warding sigils.
"It's... awfully damp in Endon?" Tom said. "Oh bother."
"Spectrumation in three, two, one..." a muffled voice said through the door.
Planes of burning light slammed through the assembled PCs, revealing, after a few moments of flickering and buzzing, the iconographic image, expanded to fill the room. It was as if they were in the scene, seeing it as the iconographer would have seen it... on a very foggy day and after a few glasses of brandy.
"Are they moving?" Dr. Hartwell said, pointing at the flickering figures of the eight wizards.
"Very slowly, I think. It's like we're seeing the instant the iconograph was taken, expanded in time and space," Tom mused aloud.
"Your parents appear to be in some distress," Dr. Hartwell said. "And oh look, your uncle Uriah has caught fire."
"As expected," Tom shrugged.
"Look at the building behind the menacing figure and burning ghosts," Dr. Hartwell said. "It's much clearer now. Doyle?"
"It's some sort of abbey or monastery," the detective said, squinting.
"That man is moving much faster than the others," Lizzy said, pointing at the unidentified nobleman. "Oh look, he's speeding up."
"I think he can see us," Doyle said.
"That's impossible!" Tom said, without much conviction.
"I do not like the way he is smiling," Dr. Hartwell said.
"He is definitely looking at us. And he's gone all fizzy around the edges." Lizzy whispered.
"Stop the machine!" Tom yelled. "I want to get off!"
Horrible Sobriety
"So what have we learned?" Lizzy asked excitedly.
"Almost nothing," Doyle replied. "That toff vanished from the iconograph. He's gone. Evaporated. So we can't even show people his face and ask 'have you seen this man' because he's not there."
"I heard of a wizard who painted a magic portrait of himself," Lizzy
said conspiratorially. "As he got older and older the portrait stayed
the same age! Oooh! Spooky!"
"Didn't you make a copy?" Tom said, ignoring Lizzy's inane prattle.
"I did. And he's vanished from the copies too."
"That's... not comforting," Dr. Hartwell said.
"I fear we're meddling with things we shouldn't be meddling with," Tom said.
"You've only just noticed?" Dr. Hartwell said, aghast.
"Well, more than usual, I mean."
"But do you remember anything else? Anything about the Amateur Aeronautics Society? That building? The unknown figures?" Doyle pressed.
"No! Nothing! If only I could sort out these tangled threads of memory!" Tom cried. "If only there was some way to..."
"Significantly boost your intelligence, insight, and problem-solving ability?" Lizzy said, her eyes shining.
"That, yes."
"Lizzy..." Dr. Hartwell cautioned, but it was too late.
"Because I can! I've been working on a potion... well it's more of a spell turned into a potion... that, I think, if I get it right, will let you do..." she said, gesticulating wildly, "all the brain things. You know."
"It's not that SpaceBeans coffee, is it?" Dr. Hartwell said. Lizzy was showing signs of Tower Madness, or something like it.
"Not even close!" Lizzy said excitedly. "It's much better!"
Lizzy's explained that she had a spell called horrible sobriety. When cast normally, the spell provided a legendarily sharp-edged view of reality. Sobriety was a spectrum, Lizzy explained. Most people are a little bit drunk all the time, even without alcohol, but horrible sobriety pushed a neutral or positive value deep into the negatives.
But this alone didn't justify Lizzy's dramatic hand gestures. She planned to potionify the spell, turning it into a drinkable liquid, then enhance that potion with herbs, spices... and a jolt of raw magic. "Normally this only works on potions I drink," Lizzy said, "but I think I can get it to work on anyone." Lizzy didn't mention that ooze-based abuse of the duplicate self spell had left her with a fluid definition of "self". All the best artists put a little of themselves into their work.
"I want no part in this," Dr. Hartwell said. "I am going to a nice quiet library to investigate that building."
Side Note: "Abbeys of Endon, Volume One AA-AB, Volume Two AC-Z" is possibly my favourite ever player-created off-the-cuff joke. I'm proud of this group.
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| Mingchen Shen |
The next morning, the group assembled in one of the Iron Spike's workshops.
"I have discovered the identity of the building in the background of the iconograph," Dr. Hartwell said, with dark circles under his eyes.
"Is it Scythrop Abbey?" Doyle replied, equally tired.
"How did you figure it out?"
"Went to the Auld Grey Cathedral and asked Deacon Prutt, who handles the records and land transfers. He didn't want to talk about it until I mentioned the whole parliament exploding teleportation thing. Then he became very talkative."
"So you discovered the identities of the other people in the image?" Tom said.
"No. Well, yes and no. Maybe. Our vanishing friend also has an evaporating signature, which caught fire when we did the experiment with the iconograph. The other wizard might be Professor Morwent, a geomancer and 'dimensional analyst', whatever that is, who vanished some years ago. Also, Scythrop Abbey is allegedly haunted. And another thing, we should definitely investigate the alchemists. They're up to something."
"Wonderful," Dr. Hartwell said. "And now Tom, against all medical advice, is going to drink that."
"It's fine!" Lizzy said. The potion glowed the ominous purple-blue of extremely strong magical radiation hitting water and trying to turn it into plasma. Ingredients included, but were not limited to, coca leaf, toad glands, kerosene, essence of tea, and a pinch of hideously expensive monoatomic saffron powder.
"It's in an ice bath and it's capped with lead solder."
"It's full of nutrients!"
"Oh just give me the damn potion," Tom said, putting on asbestos gloves. "If I die... try to figure all this out. It's a terrible mess."
Side Note: the Potion Wizard has a cantrip that lets them "Spend 1 MD to double the duration of a potion you drink, or double its numerical effects (HP healed, damage reduce, etc.)" Foolishly, or perhaps wisely, I did not cap this doubling. And Lizzy has access to a Gargantuan Magic Battery and nearly unlimited MD.
Thankfully, she decided two doublings was enough. Horrible sobriety merely gave Tom a +16 to Intelligence and Wisdom for the potion's duration. While stats in the GLOG are capped at 20, bonuses are not capped. Imagine how much alcohol someone would have to drink to be to get a -16 to Int and Wis. Then, imagine the opposite of that.
For a few long seconds, all he could do was suffer. This wasn't a hangover. It was worse. It was a perpetual hang-somersault. He felt like he'd aged a thousand years. Every sound was discordant agony. Every heartbeat tore him apart.
"Tom?" Dr. Hartwell said.
Tom tried to say, "Gods and devils, Augustus! I have two sets of memories! I remember being raised by my mother and, separately, by my father. And Uriah Shambledrake moves between these two sets of memories like an instrument in a fugue, bouncing between two voices, never at home in either. What am I? Who am I? Was I copied, cloned? From what evil mixture was I compounded? And why? I remember their deaths, separately, and being comforted by the other parent, separately! When did I merge? Are any of these memories real?
The crossover date can't be the only date of the balloon accident that I remember, the nineteenth of Malbrogia, or I wouldn't have memories of either parent after that date, and I do. What happened then? Was it really two separate balloon accidents, one accident doubled, or a balloon accident at all?
Does it have something to do with time travel? Who is Uriah Shambledrake Junior? Is he Uncle Uriah travelling backwards in
time? Is he the origin of my doubled memories? Is he me travelling back in
time to undo my current mistakes? Did Konivov travel back in time before we met him for the first time? He didn't recognize me when we met but he could have lied. Why didn't George Miles recognize me, or the name Shamebledrake? Or did he? Was he hoping for a sign, a clue, an invitation? Damn damn damn, I don't have enough information. I can see the edges of the puzzle pieces I have and they don't fit together."
Unfortunately, Tom's mind was moving far, far faster than his mouth and vocal cords, so instead he made a high-pitched keening noise while staring straight ahead.
"I think it worked," Lizzy said. "His hat's on fire."
Dr. Hartwell gave her a withering look.
"Octarine discharge," she explained. "He's thinking so many thoughts at once that he's creating a massive thaumic differential. It's why wizards wear pointy hats. Acts like the wick in a candle," Lizzy said, grinning. "Sends the heat from a brainstorm upwards."
The good doctor had seen the phenomenon before, and even experienced it during particularly intense periods of study, but usually it was a faint glow of fragmented light. The top of Tom's head looked like a blowtorch made of diamond fireworks, and the light it shed cast unnatural and writhing shadows. "You consider that a good sign?"
"It sure beats exploding," Lizzy said.
"NeedtoseeGeorgeMiles," Tom buzzed, standing up suddenly and more-or-less flinging himself towards the door.
"Miles? Oh damn, he's going for the Moving Miracle!" Doyle said.
"GetinthebackoftheMira!" Tom shrieked.
"You don't know how to fly this thing!" Doyle yelled. Tom glared at him briefly, swatted open the glovebox, extracted the manual, flipped through it, and tossed it over his shoulder. Doyle reached out, grabbed it, and started reading frantically.
"Donowhangonthreetwoone," he said, and firmly grasped the control levers.
Endon's First Car Chase
The Mira leapt upwards. Lizzy whooped with delight. Dr. Hartwell felt his breakfast drop towards his knees, then rebound to what felt like the top of his head. Doyle closed his eyes and braced for death.
"We're flying!" Lizzy said. "You can see the whole city from up here! We must be a hundred feet in the air!"
"I don't want to see the whole city from up here," Dr. Hartwell moaned. "If I wanted to see the whole city I can look from the Iron Spike."
"Adjustangleandincination," Tom said, pulling a few more levers. The Mira gently wobbled and began to glide forward. "Ccelerting."
"No accelerating!" Dr. Hartwell yelled, but it was too late. Confident in his newfound potion-induced omniscience, Tom pulled another lever and sent the Mira rocketing forward. Dr. Hartwell's breakfast, which had just returned to its accustomed abode, tried to escape through his spine. Doyle's hat nearly escaped, but he rammed it onto his head with one hand while gripping the Mira's wooden trim with the other.
"What is that?" Lizzy said, pointing over the plush leather seat of the ungainly vehicle. "It's an eclipse of the sun!"
"Not good," Doyle muttered. Dr. Hartwell thought darkly of the rat in his basement, the polymorphed Monarch of Endon kidnapped and anointed by the sapient rats of Endon. Eclipses were said to herald the death of kings.
"And what's that!?" Lizzy said, pointing at a spreading wedge of darkness rising from the north.
The wizards not currently steering an experimental magical flying contraption peered at the apparition. It was a dark shadow, a wedge cut in the fading sunlight, as if a giant tower was rising over Endon, and yet nothing appeared to cast the shadow.
"It's a man on a broomstick!" Doyle said. "And he's got an axe."
"Blackglass?" Tom said, turning to look. Uriah Shambledrake Junior, it was said, carried an axe of black glass.
The figure speeding towards the car was not straddling the broomstick, but standing atop it, feet apart. It carried an axe of black glass, an axe that trailed darkness like a cloak.
"It's Uriah Shambledrake..." Lizzy started to say. Dr. Hartwell made an anguished noise before she could say "Junior." The name of this mysterious figure seemed to conjure thunder, and the Mira felt dreadfully exposed.
"Accelerate!" Dr. Hartwell said, as the figure drew closer. Tom slammed the lever forward. Eight moveable rods at the back of the Mira fired at once, launching the vehicle forward with an eyeball-compressing jolt.
"We must be going twenty miles an hour!" Lizzy said breathlessly. "Or even thirty."
"And he! Is going! Faster!" Dr. Hartwell said.
"Aaa!" Lizzy said, and cast inebriate. Her mutated version of the spell was predatory, and Uriah Shambledrake Jr's layed of mage armour detonated like glass flower petals. Moments later, his broomstick slammed into the side of the Mira. All Doyle could look at was his eyes, his burning red eyes... identical in every way to Tom's. Uriah swung his axe at Tom's neck, burying the blade nine inches into the back of the seat and slicing a chunk off Tom's shoulder.
"One or none!" he screamed, in a voice full of otherworldly rage.
Tom's thoughts moved at a hundred times normal speed. He was arguably most intelligent human being in the city, and possibly in history. Unfortunately, Tom's metabolism moved at normal speed. His overheating brain had sucked his reserves dry, and now, in a moment of mortal crisis, it simply gave up. Tom slumped forward. His vice-like grip on the controls fell away.
Side Note: Horrible sobriety has a cost: 1 non-lethal damage per Int or Wis roll. And Initiative, rolled each round, uses Wisdom. I could have ruled that Lizzy's doubling effect also doubled the non-lethal damage, but I didn't think of it at the time. Tom started the day with 20 HP. He is a beefy wizard.
"Tom!" Dr. Hartwell shouted, slapping the back of the wizard's head and digging in his bag for smelling salts.
Doyle swore, drew his umbrella, hooked the curved end Uriah's axe, and yanked it out of the cloaked figure's hand. Then, with a flourish, he drew his truncheon of locking. He struck Uriah on the ankle and the truncheon transformed into a pair of manacles... with a gravity-based enchantment added by Chastity Flintwich. Uriah looked briefly surprised. Then the enchantment caught and yanked him downwards with the force of a falling anvil.
Uriah's sudden departure swung the rear of the Mira down, pointing its nose at the sky. The vehicle began to gain altitude rapidly.
Assisted by Dr. Hartwell's smelling salts and medical slaps, Tom lurched back into consciousness, accelerated directly into hyperconciousness, and swung the Mira around in a wild roll. "Gottolosealtitude," Tom said. "I'll try to put us... down... a street," he muttered, as he passed out again.
Dr. Hartwell groaned. The maneuver put the car on the same course as Uriah Shambledrake's plummeting body. He cast cure wounds to haul Tom back into the waking world, even though he knew it was only temporary.
Black bats, or things that resembled bats, burst from Uriah Shambledrake Junior. Some gripped his cloak and arms. With his legs still locked in the Doyle's gravity shackles, he landed upright on Gaumdart Ave. Endon's citizens scattered like mice before the thresher. Uriah raised his hands and the bats flew towards the Mira.
Up close, they were clearly not bats. They were bags of black flesh, tar, and teeth, and they latched onto the car's inhabitants with ravenous hunger. Doyle and Lizzy caught mild bites, but Tom, who couldn't cower behind the windscreen, caught a bat on the arm. It chewed into him with a noise like a sausage grinder, sending flakes of bone and spurts of blood across Doyle's coat. Tom screamed and passed out again.
"Get off you bastard!" Doyle said, hitting the bat with his umbrella until it burst.
"Can you land this thing?" Dr. Hartwell shouted.
"I'll try!" Doyle examined the forest of unlabelled levers, found one he vaguely remembered from the manual, and yanked it. The Mira pitched downward. The front skids hit the rough cobbles of Gaumdart Avenue and sent up a spray of sparks before one jutting stone caught the skid and flipped the vehicle like a tossed toy.
Dr. Hartwell found himself, still in a sitting position, flying through the air about ten feet off the ground. He sighed, cast polymorph, and selected a combat-capable flying humanoid creature to minimize the risk of systemic shock. Dr. Hartwell turned into a Harpy. Thanks to a casting mishap, he left his shed skin, clothes, and tools behind, but he didn't need them. He had claws. He tucked in his wings, extended his natural weapons, and performed a diving fly-by attack on Uriah Shambledrake Junior.... though he spent the next few seconds trying to figure out how to reverse.
Lizzy was also flung from the Mira, but elected to hit the ground and roll instead of turning into a "nude woman of the feathered persuasion" as the papers later described the creature seen on Gaumdart Ave. She dislocated her shoulder and acquired more bruises than a crate of wiggled pears, but she stood up in a fighting mood.
Doyle clung to his seat, upside-down, as the Mira hurtled towards Uriah Shambledrake Junior. The bastard is smiling, he thought.
With a wave of his hand, Uriah created a wall of force on Gaumdart Ave. The Mira, flying upside-down and sideways, hurled towards it at the unbelievable speed of twenty miles an hour.
Doyle sighed. "Fuck you and the broomstick you rode in on," he said, and cast reciprocal teleport. He swapped Tom for Uriah, then closed his eyes and braced for the crash.
Tom, still unconscious, landed gently on the street, surrounded by bits of the Mira's control system.
Uriah didn't have time to react before the Mira pancaked itself against the invisible wall of force blocking the avenue.
"Doyle!" Lizzy screamed as she sprinted towards Endon's first automobile wreck. She drew her magical kitchen knife just in case.
Dr. Hartwell, after figuring out how his wings worked, landed next to the tangled mass of wood, metal, and flesh. Lizzy hurled aside bits of bonnet and upholstery to reveal the body of Uriah Shambledrake Junior. She stabbed it discreetly a few times, then turned to search for Doyle. She found him under the remains of the back seat.
"Had it," he gurgled.
"It's not so bad," Lizzy said reassuringly.
"Can't be fixed," the detective said soothingly. "You'd never get the ribs right."
"I'm sure Dr. Hartwell can get you nice new ribs," she said.
"What does Dr. Hartwell know about mending umbrellas?" Doyle coughed.
"Umbrellas?"
Doyle shifted in the wreckage and produced the tragic remains of his rapier-umbrella combo. "It's past hope," he said morosely.
Lizzy spluttered in agitation. "But are you alright?"
"I'll live. Nothing a few plasters can't mend." Doyle crawled out of the wreck,
Dr. Hartwell examined the detective's leg, gave an avian shrug, and hopped over to Tom. The lightning wizard's condition was much more serious. The bat had chewed off his arm, and, Dr. Hartwell was surprised to discover, a fair portion of his face. Tom was bleeding freely and still breathing, which was a good sign. On the other hand, Dr. Hartwell didn't have opposable thumbs. He tried to communicate this to Lizzy with a few croaked words.
"Trollblood? Trollblood." Lizzy said, nodding, and pulled a vial of the black viscous liquid from her handbag. "I'll just pour some on this... stump area." Dr. Hartwell sighed and covered his eyes. At least Lizzy had a demonstration model of the Troll Centrifuge back at the lab.
Tom sprouted a new, muscular, and significantly larger troll-like arm, and also grew an grim yellow troll-like eye. His hair turned black and quill-like, and warts spread from the wounds like lichens on old stone. He sat up, the auroral cone of intense wizard thought erupted from his skull. Dr. Hartwell honked in dismay and flapped off.
"Xplain," Tom buzzed.
"Trollblood fixed you. Uriah's dead. The eclipse is still on," Lizzy said.
"Repose," Tom said, pointing at Uriah's body, "then backSpike."
Lizzy thought about it, flipped open her spellbook/cookbook, peeled open the secret page at the back, and cast gentle repose on Uriah Shambledrake Jr.'s corpse. It's not necromancy, she thought, it's Fourth Aid. Or what comes before Fourth Aid."
"That ought to hold his soul," she said smugly. "Oh bugger, I'm melting! I'm meeeelting!" Whether from ooze-based duplicate self experiments or a Potion Wizard mishap, Lizzy liquefied.
"Well don't just stand there," she gurgled at a bystander. "Get a bucket."
In retrospect, Lizzy admitted that keeping three cakes of raw opium and an the mostly empty vial of trollblood in her apron was a mistake. Her liquefied body absorbed the lightly wrapped narcotics and the dregs of the trollblood, as well as a healthy pint of Endon's street sweepings. The effects mostly cancelled each other out. "I don't feel so good," she murmured. "I think I will have a little sleep." Gurgling snores echoed across the avenue.
Doyle constructed a crutch out of a fender and hobbled over to the crowd of bystanders. "A cab," he shouted, and, with the unerring luck of a Civic Wizard, a cab appeared.
"Everybody in," he said, gesturing vaguely at the debris and mayhem. "To the Iron Spike. One private investigator, one Tom Shambledrake, one liquid secretary, one Harpy, one corpse. No stops, no questions. Big tip."
 |
| Jack T. Cole |
The Sarcophagus
Before the potion wore off, Tom grabbed his spellbook, aimed control metal at a pile of scrap iron in the yard of the Iron Spike, and constructed an iron mauseoleum for the body of Uriah Shambledrake Junior. His magic-addled mind could see the flow of energy and calculate thaumic vertices with inhuman precision. The inside of the building resembled the outside of a sea urchin or an archaic torture device, but it would, Tom assured the group later, create an impenetrable magical barrier. Nothing could get in and nothing, souls included, could get out.
"But why?" Dr. Hartwell asked.
Tom thought for a moment. It had all seemed so clear at the time. He'd felt like a god. Now, his brain felt like soggy bread. "It seemed very important at the time. I'm sure I had a good reason."
Why did Uriah Shambledrake Junior attack? Who is he, and who is Tom? What was the Amateur Aeronautics Society? Who is the vanishing figure, and why did he vanish? Who killed Uriah Shambledrake Senior?
Alas, poor Lizzy! She melt.
ReplyDeleteI continue to love every one of these.
ReplyDelete